A Change of Direction

So . . .  I haven't written in quite a long time.  Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of stories to tell.  The kids give me plenty of material each and every day.  I really could write books.  I've been debating, however, about how to use this blog.  My kids are growing up in uncharted territory where a click of a button releases information to the whole world.  What I write will have the potential to be seen by just about anybody.   I know that at least one of my children has inherited my ability to become embarrassed easily and would be mortified if he knew that goofy things he said or did were on the Internet.  I've even tried to cut back on Facebook posts about the crazy things that they do.  I want to do right by my children and cause as little damage as possible!

Building a log cabin in the backyard while wearing their superhero
costumes.  Like I said, they provide plenty of material.

This predicament means that I am left with far less topics for blogging.  I can write about current events in our lives, or I can just brag on my kids.  Current events are good, but probably not intriguing for people to read.  Bragging on my kids is fun, but paints a very distorted picture of our daily life.  Our lives, however, took an unexpected turn and I suddenly have many topics about which I want to write!

This blog is now going to chronicle the life of our homeschooling family.  (Well, hopefully it will do that . . . . consistency in writing my blog is not necessarily my forte.)  I'm hoping to use the blog as a journal of our first year of homeschooling, so that we can look back and see all of the exciting things we've learned together as a family. 

If someone had told me two or three years ago that we would be considering homeschooling, I would've laughed.  I enjoyed school and I enjoyed teaching, so homeschooling was not even on my radar.  We have several friends who home school, and we had always said that the idea was nice for them, but wouldn't work for us.  We were looking forward to the school experience and going to school concerts, back to school night, and a list of other traditional school activities.
For the past two years, Luke went to a private preschool.  He loved going to see his friends and he loved his teachers.   He was academically ready for kindergarten material at the beginning of his second year of preschool (his birthday is just a few weeks short of the cutoff), so I started working on teaching him to read at home.  I had always thought that teaching him would be awkward and weird, but it felt very comfortable and natural to us both.  I loved cuddling on the couch with him while he learned a new vowel sound, or having him sit across from me at the dining room table working with base ten blocks while I was working on the computer.      

Luke's drawing of arteries and veins


 

Throughout the past year, we've enjoyed observing caterpillars and watching them turn into moths, learning the value of different coins and counting money, and singing songs about the months of the year, days of the week and continents on the globe.  We've trapped, identified and researched bugs from the backyard, discovered that Beverly Cleary is an amazing author, and learned about primary and secondary colors.  Learning has been relaxed and fun.  In the process, Ben and Olivia have learned a great deal, too!  The other day, I overheard Benjamin teaching Olivia about animal sounds and it is not uncommon to hear Benjamin singing Luke's days of the week song. 



Benjamin teaches Olivia about African animals

I'm really excited about the upcoming year.  I know that we are going to have days that are challenging and days that are bliss (and many in between), but I hope this will be an overall positive experience for our family.